would you pay a deposit for a restaurant reservation?

[bizaro86]

Originally Posted by GGG

Depends on what the reasonable cancelation period is.

New Years / Valentine’s Day I would be fine with a no changes policy however for a restaurant that say books out Friday/Saturday a month in advance I would like to be able to cancel without penalty with some degree of notice. Say 72hrs??? It still allows a restaurant to fill the vacancy and while giving people some flexibility.

I think everywhere that does this that isn't $200pp+ would allow cancellations with notice. I bet 24 hours would be the most common.

[Amethyst]

Originally Posted by Roger

You keep saying this as though you're the only customer that the restaurant has to deal with. It's not YOU, it's everyone who they're trying to teach lessons to. The thing is, 90% of us already know the lesson, and we have no problem with restaurants that are trying to weed out the other 10% that have no regard for their limited seating, which seriously affects their bottom line. It baffles me how anyone can be upset about a deposit for a reservation.

Reserving a table and then flaking is terrible. It's as thoughtless as parking your car in front of a car wash bay and then shopping at a different business. Obviously, that's about as stupid of a thing as I can think of, but it's pretty much exactly what you're doing when you flake on a restaurant reservation. Now that business isn't making money on their investment, because some selfish dickhead decided that he's more important.

Most people aren't like this, but there are some, and it's totally fair that restaurants want to mitigate losses with something as simple as this. The only people that should be taking offence to this are the very people it's targeting.

Why give 90% of your customers an extra hassle? If it is affecting their bottom line, then do it. But if you're doing it because you want to teach the flakes a lesson, then you need to consider if it's worth annoying all the non-flakes. I'm surprised so many people are willing to hand out money early just because other people are flakes.

And if they need to do it, use the credit card hold option that hotels use. It gives the restaurants the insurance they need and causes the least work for the 90% of customers that are non-flakes.

[btimbit]

Seems fair to me, I'd gladly particiapte

[Roger]

Originally Posted by Amethyst

Why give 90% of your customers an extra hassle? If it is affecting their bottom line, then do it. But if you're doing it because you want to teach the flakes a lesson, then you need to consider if it's worth annoying all the non-flakes. I'm surprised so many people are willing to hand out money early just because other people are flakes.

And if they need to do it, use the credit card hold option that hotels use. It gives the restaurants the insurance they need and causes the least work for the 90% of customers that are non-flakes.

I don't know if you've ever been in management or run your own business, but that 10% is pretty much your take home. 90% of people have respect for that, and don't mind you having a contingency against not being profitable that night, especially when it's absolutely no skin off their back, assuming that they show up as planned.

Being mad or offended by this is so weak. This does nothing just the same way as masks do nothing. Just because YOU can't see it, doesn't mean it's useless.

[ken0042]

Reading this thread, I wonder if some of the differences in opinion are due to people's experience in working in restaurants. Reservations in general are not good for business; from a pure perspective of number of tables they can serve in a shift. Let's say your average party stays for an hour at the table. To accommodate a reservation, you need to have that table on hold and empty for around 15 minutes ahead of time. So now each seating is 75 minutes instead of 60. Given that each meal rush is within a narrow time, if a restaurant has 20 tables; from 5:00-8:00 they could handle 48 reservations. If they just used a waiting list, they could handle 60 seatings in that same time.

Now reservations are good customer service, which is why many restaurants offer them.

Let's go back to those 48 reservations, if 10% of them "no show"- they have lost 4 or 5 seatings. Sure, after some time they could re-sell the table. However even 15 minutes after the no show the table has been sitting for 30 minutes at this point. And they may not be able to offer it to a walk up as now the next reservation may have to wait.

That being said, charging a deposit or pre-authing a credit card seems reasonable to me. However I would say that even having one hour notice should be sufficient. Unlike a hotel who may have turned somebody away at 3pm and holds a room until 7pm, the table will likely re-sell if the restaurant is busy. If the restaurant isn't busy enough to re-sell the table, that means they were likely little harmed by the short notice cancellation.

So I would say it is reasonable to have a pre-auth and a penalty of what one person's meal would cost. It gives the restaurant something back for a no show, and provides enough incentive for the customer to want to call in to cancel.

[I_H8_Crawford]

If you ever want to eat at Eight here in Calgary, you have to pay the full amount (incl. tip) up front.

$600 is what I paid for a meal we will have in Feb.

No issues with this - doctors do it all the time

[TorqueDog]

I would happily pay a deposit, provided I get to pick the table or part of the restaurant my party is seated in... let's say a 1st, 2nd, and 3rd choice for location to account for tables running over time. We booked a spot on a Stephen Ave patio once, and we ended up getting the sh-tty makeshift patio alongside Centre St where the traffic was pretty heavy at that time of day, and there was no sunlight. We ended up leaving and finding another place to eat.

Less enthused about paying a deposit for a reservation just because, but I keep my reservations so it wouldn't really impact me negatively.

[troutman]

Would you pay a deposit for tips?

3, 2, 1 . . . . .

[Sr. Mints]

I keep seeing this thread and mulling over the question, but the answer is really just no, not here in Calgary. Even something like Valentine's Day if I weren't single and pathetic, or NYE - It's still a no. I'm more of an impulsive, decide to go somewhere at the very last minute kind of person. If I can't get in I move on

When travelling, possibly

[undercoverbrother]

Originally Posted by Cole436

Anyone who opposes this may just be kind of an ass.

Hey now